Monthly Archives: May 2008

Faith and Spirituality, GeekWorld, Great Work

Mechanist or Vitalist?

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58  bar steep fall 30.12  7mpn ENE dew-point 41  Beltane, Sunny

                 Waning Gibbous Hare Moon

“The aspects of things that are most important to us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wittegenstein is a notoriously opaque, but very influential philosopher.  His Tractatus is a seminal work of 20th century philosophy, amazing for its brevity.  In this quote, though, I grasp his line of thought.  How often do you consider the solidity of a table, for example?  The beating of your heart?  The exquisite elegance of your hands?  The comfort of darkness?  The revelation in sunlight? 

Have you ever considered, I mean really considered, the wonder of life itself?  We are animate, moving through the world with intention.  So are dogs, mosquitoes and groundhogs.  The seed listens to its own voice, expresses itself and its genome through time and space.  Alive.  But.  What is life?  We see the results of life around us all the time; we experience it within ourselves, but what is it?  What is the difference between the elements in my body–the same as those in a rock or in soil, or in the air–and their inanimate counter parts still locked in the fiery cauldron of a star or the massif of a mountain range?

A book I purchased recently, but have not yet read, argues against what the author calls the Gallilean conspiracy.  I’ve forgotten why he calls it that, something about Gallileo’s approach to science, but the point is this:  even if we knew all the laws of particles and quantum mechanics and could apply them with precision to all the matter in the universe, we could still not predict the future, though there is strong element of what he calls scientistic thinking that suggests just this possibility. 

Why can’t we predict the future based on fundamental laws of nature?  Because of complexity. As things grow more complex, the complexity itself inserts a new dimension, something that does not obey the fundamental laws: intention.  Intention and complexity reach an apex in the phenomenon of life.  You could not analyze the physical elements within  my body, apply the laws of relativity and Newtonian physics to them, and predict what I will choose to have for breakfast.  Why?  Because consciousness adds intention, guided by will, and none of these added realities of complexity follow the laws of thermodynamics, say.  Is the action of complex entities constrained and guided by laws of nature?  Of course.  Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, will snuff out the complexity that I am.  But not right now.  While I’m upright and consciousness, and yes, you, too, I can choose to defy entropy by taking my blood pressure medication and staying on that good cholestrol lowering drug.  Exercising.  Good diet.  None of these, nor my decision to go to the grocery store this morning have a necessary predicate in my constituent parts.

In part this all boils down to a divide which remains an abyss between, say, the Richard Dawkins and Sam Harrises of the world, and those of us who insist on considering the divine:  vitalist or mechanist?  That is, is any organism merely the sum of its parts–mechanist, or, is it the whole more than the sum of its parts–vitalist.  I side with the vitalists.

Art and Culture, Garden

An Appetite for Nutrient Fluid (not an alien)

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56  bar steady 30.05 4mph N dew-point 43  Beltane, sunny and cool

                          Waning Gibbous Hare Moons 

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

Less is more -always; and explore constantly.  Mario Odegard, Viking Explorer and Woolly Mammoth

Up earlier again this morning to take advantage of the cool temps.  Amended the second tier bed close to the house where we have had problem after problem with growing things.  This time I added two bags composted manure and a cubic foot or so of sphagnum moss. 

It’s too shady for sun plants and too sunny for shade plants.  Gotta find something that swings both ways and can tolerate our winters. 

Meanwhile on the hydroponic front my tomato plant started from an heirloom seed now reaches close to the ceiling.  It’s a good 2.5 feet tall, headed toward its interior limitation.  It has several small yellow flowers, but no fruit as yet.  Yes, the tomato is a fruit, not a vegetable.  The astonishing thing is its appetite for nutrient fluid.  It’s going through about a gallon every four to five days.  When the fruit begins developing, I imagine its appetite will increase again.  The lettuce produces enough leaves every few days for a salad a meal for lunch and dinner.  Both the lettuce and the tomato plant are the products of one seed germinating, coming to maturity and growing its edible product.

Outside, however, if we were pioneers and our lives depended on the crop, I’d be seeking part time employment.  To pay for food next winter.  The cucumbers and morning glories I grew inside so well atrophied and died outside.  The three tomato plants, on the other hand, have done fine outside.  After puzzling over the difference for a week, it came to me this morning.  The tomato plants were in soil in pressed peat moss containers.  They had a much larger soil contained root system.   The morning glories and the cucumber were in smaller, compressed soil seed starting clumps.  That meant their root system was much more exposed, having grown in the nutrient solution rather than soil. 

The take away for me is this:  if I’m going to transplant it outside, start it in a larger ground ready pot with potting soil.  It’s a learning curve.

On the other hand, we do finally have several germinated seeds in the garden, too.  The Country Gentleman corn has begun its skyward journey as have the Ireland Annie, Dragon’s Tongue and another one I can’t recall.  We also have beets, carrots, peppers and onions, lots of onions, doing well.  We need a stretch of hot weather to get these puppies on their way.  So far they’ve been sluggards.

Though I’m signed out now for the summer, I’m headed into the art museum today for a noon tour.  Carol Wedin, a fellow docent who prefers Asian tours, called me, sick with a cold and asked me for help.  Sure.  She is a wonderful botanical illustrator/artist.

Kate’s off getting her nails done; Lois is here cleaning house and I’ve got to get in the shower to get ready for my tour.  Bye for now.

Garden, Great Work, Politics

Jazzed Up and Ready to Rock

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63  bar steep rise 29.90 0mph NNE dew-point 40  Beltane, sunny

Up at 6AM.  It’s light!  Out the door at 6:30 AM.  Drive fast to Hwy. 252.  Stop, edge forward.  Repeat.  Repeat. Repeat.  All this fossil fuel going up in exhausts of vehicles barely accomplishing anything. 

It took me an  hour, as I thought it would, to get to the Sierra Club office on Franklin Avenue for a meeting with Cathy Duvall, the national Sierra Club’s director of political activity.  It was worth it.  Cathy is a political insider, in this case, too, a Beltway insider.  That means she takes politics for what it is, not for what it could be in the best of all possible worlds, but as a place where competing forces drive against each other for power and resources.

The non-profit world, including the church, often works much like the traffic jam going into the city this morning.  Every body gets revved up, drives fast, then gets stuck in the resolutionary lane, confusing action with intention.  And a lot of political energy goes up in the exhaust, barely accomplishing anything.

Not for Cathy and the Sierra Club.  She understands the numbers, the people, the zeitgeist and still believes this could be a transformative year for the environmental agenda.  Could be.  Could be if we put the effort into a ground level campaign to educate the public.  Could be if we identify voters sensitive to our issues and see they could get to the polls.  Could be if we identify those races where a bit of extra oomph, in allies or dollars or both, could make a difference and deploy our resources wisely.  Could be.

I got jazzed up by the meeting, ready to rock.  The political committee, it turns out, has not yet formed and I may have a chance of getting involved.  This kind of energy is so different from the MIA, fiction creating and scholarly work.  It’s also different from, but closely related to the gardening energy.  This energy has an edge, a buzz.  It makes my finger tips tingle.  Old neuronal paths, long abandoned, have begun to fire.  We’ll see where it goes, if anywhere.

That said, there’s still plants to get in the ground, weeds to kill and dig up and trees to cut down, land to level.   All things in their time.

Garden, Great Work, Writing

Making My Soul Hum

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Superior Wolf is underway again.  The other day I hit on the point that had me stuck, a character I’d carried over from another novel.  He didn’t belong in this one, but it took me 25,000 words or so to figure that out.  Now a new plotline, more salient and tight, has emerged with a strong character, a protagonist who will drive the book.

It feels good to be back at fiction, a long caesura, and I hope the next one is brief.  Fiction speaks from my soul, the rest tends to be, as we said in the sixties, a head trip.  Over the years since then, I’ve learned to respect head trips.  I earned a living with them for many years and they’ve kept me engaged with the world.  They do not make my soul hum, though my  Self speaks through them as well.

Kate made a trip to the Green Barn, a nursery she really likes on Highway 65 near Isanti.  She picked up composted manure, sphagnum moss and several plants.  We have some new ferns, cucumbers, morning glories (the ones I grew in the hydroponics died outside, though the tomatoes have done fine.) squash and several grasses. 

Tomorrow morning I’m going in for a breakfast meeting at the Sierra Club, a meeting with the political director of the national Sierra Club. Politics makes my soul hum, too.  Though I can’t say exactly why, water issues matter a lot to me, so I’m angling (ha, ha) to get on the committees that deal with Lake Superior, rivers, lakes and streams.  Watersheds seem very important to me, so I hope to work on projects related to watersheds, too.  One thing I know about politics is that showing up matters, so I’m gonna show up.

Memories, Weather +Climate

Turn the Radio On and Listen to the Indy 500

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62  bar falls 29.74 2mph NW dew-point 35 Beltane, Sunny

                      Full Hare Moon

Memorial Day is this weekend and we’re still stuck back in early April.  I can recall other chilly Memorial Days, but none with the degree of regular cool air this year has had.

Since it’s Memorial Day, that means it’s Indy 500 time.  I’ll watch again this year.  The race used to take a liesurely 3-4 hours to run, now it routinely finishes between 2-3.  Though I found growing up in Indiana a strange experience, it left two indelible marks on my character.  I’m still fascinated with those big guys bouncing the orange ball up and down a hardwood floor.  I’m also ready, every Memorial Day, to turn into race fan for a day.

I only went to the race once, with my Dad, in the early 60’s or late 50’s.  The Novi engine was a Dual Overhead Cam Supercharged V8 engine, a monster driven by Jim Hurtubise.  As it came out of the fourth curve, Hurtubise would hit the accelerator for the long main straightaway.  The supercharger would kick in and an internal combustion growl would echo off the seats and reverberate until the car was well past the starting line over half a mile away.  All of us who love the race, loved that engine.  It never won, not once, but it was thing of beauty. 

Most Memorial Days I would go out to the family car with crackers and cheese, comic books and a coke.  I would turn on the radio and settle in to listen.  For the month leading up to the race the Indianapolis Star carried detailed sports page coverage and I saved those pages, too, including them in my cache.  I especially liked the rainy days when I could sit in the car, sheltered from the weather and listen to the roar of the engines as the cars hurtled around the track.

China.  Burma.  A 7.9 earthquake.  A major cyclone with another brewing in the waters of the Indian Ocean.  Unimaginable suffering.  No.  Wait.  Katrina.  Iraq.  Not unimaginable, just far away.  Burma has Pagan, a city with 2,500 Buddhist temples.  It has Mandalay where the flying fishes play.  It has Rangoon, home of a gold topped stupa.  It also has a paranoid junta, more concerned with power than the people.  China’s Sichuan region, home to fiery foods and a unique brand of Chinese culture, mountains (the shan) and proximity to a collision between the Indian tectonic plate and the Pacific.  The folding creates the shan in China and the Himalayas.  It also slips, the enormous pressures of the earth’s mantle put out of joint and indescribable power releases, a spring in the expected stability of the ground on which we walk.

There are advantages to a spot near the center of the North American tectonic plate, far from either the Atlantic or the Pacific.

Faith and Spirituality, Garden

Another Outside Day

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55 bar steady  29.78 4mph NNW  dew-point 31  Beltane, Sunny

                            Full Hare Moon

My Taoist studies have proceeded more slowly than I had hoped, but the regular appearance of material thanks to the online classes has kept me involved.  I’m on my last course now.

Another sunny day.  Work outside today, and perhaps tomorrow, too, then I have to devote some time to managing inside matters, get back to full-time writing. 

Later.

Art and Culture, Travel

A Muse Fiction

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50  bar rises 29.74  1mph NNW  dew-point 29  Beltane

                          Full Hare Moon

A lot of people considered my piece in the Muse a non-fiction account of a real tour.  Hmmm.  Wonder what I could have done to have made it a bit more obvious as fiction?  It’s nice to get reactions to it anyhow.  Allison did a creative job with the Muse this year, a lot of new and different, including the many mini-robes for a Weber send-off.   Thanks to her for publishing Inspired.

Jon doesn’t need help with the garden.  By the time the bris happens it will be all planted, but I will go out and help him level the yard for sod.

The trip down to Alabama will happen in mid-June, so June stacks up as a heavy travel month.  All of it in my little red Celica with 240,000 miles, if it holds together.  The last long trip in it required a day and a night in Pueblo, Colorado to fix an electrical hiccup that knocked out power while I drove along on the freeway toward Denver.  That was fun.

I can only guess, but the full hare moon probably got its name from visible bunnies in gardens, illuminated by a full late May, early June moon. 

Haven’t heard from Mark and Mary in a while.  They both have busy lives at this particular point in time.

Faith and Spirituality

Finding My Place among the 10,000 Things

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59  bar steady  29.77  4mph NW  dew-point 37  Beltane  Sunny and cool

                                  Full Hare Moon

Want to say a bit more about mastery (or, as Stephan said, maybe it’s anti-mastery) as living into the Self.  It has become clearer and clearer to me that I offer more impediments to the Movement of Heaven through me than I do channels.  I’m not being modest here, only stating a not too  unusual fact.  This opening and emptying of the ego so that my Self can flow through me out into the world is the big task ahead for me.  Yet, it is an ironic task, a task that only be realized in the negation of tasks.  It is a goal that has as its objective, an empty vessel and, to compound the irony, an empty vessel that will be filled, but this time not by the culture’s values, but by the values of the movement of heaven.  I believe a Taoist might call this finding my place among the 10,000 things.

I prefer this approach because it negates the notion of mastery as an over and above phenomenon, something that effort can achieve, and opens the way to mastery of the ego by the Self, the larger you that participates in the archetypal realm.  Let go and let Self, perhaps.  I envision this as a congested field filled with objects of desire and presumed needs suddenly cleared so that the plants natural to the immediate ecosphere can flourish.  It is the garden filled with native plants who require no artifice to grow; rather, they rely on the soil that the past has created, the rain a season brings and the sunlight that can reach the soil.  Native plants do not care if it is hot or wet or cold and dry, they have developed a lifeway that follows the rhythms of the seasons where they bloom. 

How much simpler our life would be if we could open ourselves to the rhythms native  to our Self; then we would not have to worry about dignity, accomplishment, status or desire.   We, too, would not care whether it was hot or dry, cold or wet, yet we would act, and act effectively because our actions would shape themselves to the  movement of the Tao. 

That’s how I see right now.

Faith and Spirituality, Friends, Garden, Our Land and Home, Weather +Climate, Woolly Mammoths

Seeking Mastery Within

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54  bar steady 29.78  1mph NW  dew-point 44  Beltane, sunny and cool

                                       Full Hare Moon

The weather remains cool.  This is not a long spring; it’s a long late March or early April.  The gardening upside has been longer lasting blooms on the tulips and the daffodils and the scylla.  This weather has also proved excellent for transplanting, reducing transplant shock to a minimum and resulting in little wilting after a move.  The downside has been slow germination (no germination?) for some vegetable seeds planted and slow growth for the ones that have sprouted.  From the humans who live here in Andover perspective it’s been a great season.  Cool weather to work outside and to further many landscaping projects.

Last night’s conversation about mastery at Tom’s lingers today.  At one point we asked each person to claim what mastery they found in themselves, then we offered evidence of mastery we found in them, too, from an outsider’s perspective.  Various Woolly’s were masters of soulfullness, love, living, listening, communicating, design, the big picture, and drawing others out to see the best in themselves. 

Tom and I were wrong in our assumption that individual Woollys would find it difficult to claim a sense of mastery.  And delighted to be wrong, too.  We affirmed what each Woolly saw as their area of mastery and added ones they hadn’t seen or chose to ignore, e.g. mastery of forensic engineering, computer skills and sheepshead, making the complex accessible, letting go, the body in motion.

In my case, for example, I admitted I couldn’t find anything to claim since I’ve lead such a curiousity driven life, often running full speed down divergent paths at the same time.  Then, I said, “Well, I guess I could claim being a master student.”  That got modified in the eyes of the group to seeker after essential, radical truth.  OK, I can see that.  “You’re a master teacher, too.”  Hadn’t occurred to me, but that’s become a theme in various areas of my life of late, so it must be there in spite of my opacity to it.     

Tom initiated a get together for designing the evening and having me as a co-facilitator, rather than a servant lackey.  He made the food simple, sandwiches and soup followed by a big, really big, cookie.  Others seemed to appreciate the act of co-operation in design of the evening.  Tom and I wanted to introduce better time managment, and we did; but, that was not appreciate by everyone.  “Felt forced.”  Well, yes.  But every time together has its limits and therefore its limits on contribution.

As we closed, Tom observed that the Woolly’s as a group are a master that each of us can turn to for guidance in life.  I nuanced that a bit by suggesting that as a group, over 20+ years together, we have mastered groupness.  We are a living community, best evidenced, as someone said, by the fact that we show up.

I have signed out for the summer at the Art Institute.  I need the break.  I’ll use the time for writing, family and our land.

Art and Culture, Friends, Woolly Mammoths

Anne Looked Grand

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43  bar steep rise 29.74  1mph NW  dew-point 41  Beltane

                                 Full Hare Moon

Whoa.   More socializing today than I get in a normal month.  AM Eric Kjerlling, curator of Oceanic art at the Met, gave an information packed lecture on this vast geographic region and its varied art forms.  He was funny, knowledgeable and deep.  An excellent introduction that I will want to revisit if I get the Asmat special exhibition year.  It was my number 2 choice after William Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelites.  The Pre-Raphaelites are among my favorites in Western art and I hope I get that exhibition.

Saw several folks at the coffee on break during the lecture, but then retired to St. Paul, 1394 Lincoln, for a wonderful couple of hours seeing others from our docent class.  Careen Heggard’s house is appointed by an architect, Careen, and wonderfully casual  and elegant at the same time.  She has a small cottage on the grounds, a former gardner’s residence, which she uses a cabin to which she does not have to drive, tea-house, escape.  Looks an ohana dwelling like we see in Hawai’i.

Morry, Joy and I stood out in the rain by the fire discussing literature.  Joy had a great line, one I hadn’t heard before, “Oh, that.  It’s just my stigmata acting up.”

Anne Grand was there and looked great.  She also seemed sharp.  Quite a relief.  I had worried about her.  Bill Bomash showed up, too, on crutches and looking wan.  I had to leave just as he came so I didn’t get a chance to chat.

Home for a nap at 2:30.  The morning and the lunch tired me out, as socializing tends to do.  I got up from my nap, went out in the rain, dug siberian iris, bearded iris and hemerocallis for Yin.  Scott brought three big bags of  hosta.  I felt like a piker.  I assured him there were more plants.

Woolly meeting at Tom’s.  On mastery.  Ode was home and it was great to see  him.  His report on the exhibit he did for UNESCO, sex ed for Thai teens, inspired me.  The meeting was a good one, deep and funny.  More later.  Paul and Charlie H. couldn’t make it.  More on the content tomorrow.